Murdoch's UK Paywall a Miserable Failure

David Gerard writes "As part of his war against free, Rupert Murdoch put the Times and Sunday Times of London behind a paywall. Michael Wolff of Newser asks how that's working out for him. You can guess: miserable failure: 'Not only is nobody subscribing to the website, but subscribers to the paper itself — who have free access to the site — are not going beyond the registration page. It's an empty world.' Not that this wasn't entirely predictable." Update: 07/17 01:41 GMT by T : Frequent contributor Peter Wayner writes skeptically that the Newsday numbers should be looked at with a grain of salt: "I believe they were charging $30/month for the electronic edition and $25/month for the dead tree edition which also offered free access to the electronic edition. In essence, you had to pay an extra $5 to avoid getting your lawn littered with paper. The dead tree edition gets much better ad rates and so it is worth pushing. It's a mistake to see the raw numbers and assume that the paywall failed."

Comments

Duh...

[guruevi]

This experiment has been tried over the last few decades (ever since the papers discovered the commercial Internet) and has failed miserably every time. Some magazines/papers even closed their doors after they tried it because they invested too much money in something that had 0 return on investment and alienated their existing audience that was actually paying their bills.

Re:Duh...

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious reason why WSJ and FT succeeded is because they provide stock information which is a heavily regulated market that costs a *lot* to get into and to provide. Therefore there aren't any free alternatives (*) -- everyone who offers stock information charges for it, and the audience is used to this fact and accepts it.

The brand recognition and virtual monopoly position enjoyed by these two papers would also have helped.

(*) Yes, I know there are free stock listing all over the place, but you'll notice that all of them have a time delay of at least several hours. Real-time stock data is only available to those willing to pay for it.

Re:Duh...

[mcgrew]

ever since the papers discovered the commercial Internet

Commercial internet... Commercial internet... Commercial internet... Jees I'm getting old. I miss the nineties and early zeros when the closest thing to a "commercial internet" was a web page with a single ad banner, which everyone bitched and moaned about to no avail. None of the sites I ran back then had any advertising at all; like most other folks' sites then, it was a labor of love.

The damned greedheads seem to ruin everything. Thank god people aren't falling for Murdoch's nonsense (yet).

Murdoch's terrible Faux News was on the TV in the bar last night and gees, if anyone would have talked about Bush when he was in office the way Murdoch's "news" station talks about Obama, Faux News and the neocons would have called them "traitors" and screamed bloody murder.

Re:Duh...

[TooMuchToDo]

I'd have to say that the Economist is *far* more informational in value than the WSJ. When traveling, I almost always pick up a copy of the Economist from a newsstand to read on the plane (but would like/pay for an iPad version if they made it).

Re:Duh...

[deoxyribonucleose]

They get technology reasonably well. They occasionally call out the occasional walking piece of corruption that other are resigned to (read: Silvio Berlusconi). But editorial-wise, they are very far right. They supported the iraq war, they believed in WMD, and they denied global warming for a very long time (until 2007?).

Far right? Too simplistic. You may not like all their editorial stances, but that does not make them right (sic!). They were and remain skeptical of proposed measures against global warming: would they be effective? would they be efficient? which aren't bad questions to raise for a magazine with that name. Being skeptical is not necessarily 'denying', especially if you prove willing to change your stance with further evidence. They also want to abolish the British monarchy (for starters): not exactly the position one traditionally associates with the conservative right. On Iraqi WMD they were duped and admitted it frankly: so were plenty of other publications and institutions few would call 'right-wing'. They also fell heads-over-heel for Obama.

Me? I'm just a sucker for beatiful and efficient prose, with an occasional dash of dry humour. Would that I could achieve it.

Re:Duh...

[zevans]

I'm interested to see how the FCC plan to impose this on the London Times, the Independent, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Die Welt, Le Monde...

Re:Duh...

[mcelrath]

The name of the magazine is "The Economist". They have a particular viewpoint (hint, it's in the name). On that topic and from that perspective they are very, very good. On non-economic topics, why would you expect them to be any better than your local newspaper? Read it for what it is and what it represents: an economic perspective. Of course there's more to life than economics, and you should look elsewhere for editorials on it.

Re:Duh...

[js_sebastian]

They get technology reasonably well. They occasionally call out the occasional walking piece of corruption that other are resigned to (read: Silvio Berlusconi). But editorial-wise, they are very far right. They supported the iraq war, they believed in WMD, and they denied global warming for a very long time (until 2007?).

I wouldn't call the economist far right... they are in favor of legalization of drugs, for instance, and are generally against all forms of prohibitionism. I think they are quite left-wing on many social issues (in favor of civil liberties, etc), and a bit right wing on economy (as in strongly free market oriented).

Re:Duh...

[Bemopolis]

Senate Democrats did not vote for the Iraq War because they believed in it. They voted for it to avoid looking like spineless cowards. Which, in the end, means that they *are* spineless cowards.

Belief in WMD was similarly pervasive, since the intelligence community was saying they were there, and no evidence had come out yet to suggest this analysis was incorrect.

Except for the testimony of the UN weapons inspectors, and Hussein Kamel, and Joe Wilson (the diplomat, not the "You lie!" jagoff). And those who noted that the first national security meeting of the Bush administration covered the possibility of invading Iraq, which might be coloring their kitchen-sink approach to justifying an invasion ("He tried to kill mah daddy!"). Oh, and the fact that the chief CIA witness had the codename "Curveball" ferchrissakes. But beisdes all of that, yes, no one doubted the word of the administration.

Re:Duh...

[Bassman59]

They strongly supported John McCain until it became obvious that Palin was sinking his ship.

McCain's ship was already sinking by the time he chose Palin out of desperation. It actually worked for awhile, too, if you remember, until the media tore her apart.

Uh, the media did not tear her apart. She self-destructed by whiffing on the softball questions tossed to by Katie Couric, after which her access to the media was limited to Fox News. It soon became clear that she was an airhead (or worse). McCain's choice of such a woefully inadequate running mate showed that his judgement was indeed poor, and as such the so-called "Independent voters" broke for Obama.

So, what you call "the media tear[ing] her apart" is really an all-too-rare example of the media doing their job.

Oppinions

[Anonymous Coward]

This is being presented as a fact, but its merely a oppinion based on insider information. No where it states any real numbers. Dont get me wrong, I dont agree with Murdoch's ways but that doesnt warrant factless bashing.

Re:Oppinions

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, factless bashing should never occur in proximity to a Murdoch media outlet...

I am utterly surprised.

[Arancaytar]

Who would have thought people would object to paying for information (or the closest Murdoch equivalent thereof; this guy owns Fox News) that is also provided for free?

It's not the paywall that's failed

[petes_PoV]

It's doing exactly what it was designed to (although making it hard for legitimate subscribers to access the content sounds like it needs tweaking). The crashing failure is the business model. What Murdoch seems to have not understood is that while he can put up the price of the paper product and only lose a small proportion of his customers, sothe difference between a price of 50p and 51p is small, but on the internet the difference between 0p and 1p is huge.

Re:It's not the paywall that's failed

[myocardialinfarction]

Here's the calculation: All of the BBC's content (TV,radio,news): £145.50 pa The Times and Sunday Times: £104 pa On a free market basis Rupees business model doesn't work. But business model inclues political interference in the financing of the BBC, on the basis that its competition is unfair. _On the contrary_. We in the UK pay for the BBC willingly because it is worth the price, and we don't for the Times because it's, well, who cares? The WSJ, FT and Economist are worth paying for to the folks in those industries. The Times is just some more crap from a Murdoch company.

Totally Unexpected Of The Day

[Crypto Gnome]

In other news - water is (usually) wet, deserts are (usually) dry, and The TaxMan Cometh!

The world is FULL of idiots.

Even rich ones.

Lemme give the man a (free, even) clue: On the one side, he wants to *get paid* for all the Free News his "papers" are putting onto "the web". On the other hand he completely ignores all the FREE EYEBALLS that search engines like Google bring to his website.

While incessantly whining about people who 'want something for nothing', what he actually does is treat "free eyeball traffic" as being "worth nothing". Small Wonder His Website No Longer Gets Eyeballs.

Murdock: HEY GOOGLE, STOP SENDING EYEBALLS TO MY WEBSITE without paying me for my content
Google: You had me at "stop sending eyeballs to my website" - all you had to do was ask.

Re:still early days

[hedwards]

Lower prices would help, but that doesn't explain why the subscribers that get free access weren't going in their either. It's easy to say the price is too high, but when the people that have free access aren't using it either, you have to think that it's something else that's going on.

Re:still early days

[nyctopterus]

Because having to fill in forms--any forms--just to look at something on a website is something people just will not do. I think what is really important is not how much they charge (although it does seem a little steep), but is the hassle factor, having to go an find your coupon or whatever is just a pain in the neck. Totally not worth the hassle for most people.

Until there is a micro-payment system that's as easy as no payment at all (like say, the iTunes Store compared to your choice of P2P), there isn't going to be any headway in getting people to pay for this stuff.

Looks like success to me

[metamatic]

Dramatically fewer people reading Murdoch's crap, and he's still not making any money.

Looks like success from where I'm sitting.

Re:Inevitable Future

[silanea]

I'm also wondering what people would consider something they'd pay for.

Off the top of my head:

1. Information that is relevant to me. I could not care less about sports or the latest celeb gossip, but I do care about technology and the innards of current political processes. Few print dailies offer the latter in any really comprehensive form, and none carries the former on an ongoing basis. I would need to be able to select a) which branches of news I am interested in, and b) on what level. I want the gory details on tech and politics, but I can do with a general overview of the economy since I do not know enough about this field to interpret detailed information on specific companies or industries. I can do without 90% of what is usually crammed into the "culture" section, but I do want to read about new film, book and music releases in certain genres.
2. Properly researched information, with all sources (bar confidential ones) given and all quotations properly attributed. It is the bloody 21st century and those idiots have yet to discover the mysterious magic of hyperlinks and bibliographic citations. I am sick and tired of reading that "circles say" or "eye-witnesses stated". Who said and did what? I want the ability to verify what they claim in their articles.
3. Reasonably objective reporting. Complete freedom from bias cannot be achieved, of course, but I do not need murders described in picturesque prose, as if Steven King himself had written the article. Also I want to know what happens in the world, not what publisher X deems compatible with my world view. Political correctness has no place in the selection and priorisation of news. Again, who did what, why did they do it, and what conclusions may be drawn from that?
4. Background and analysis. If MP x says "GM-food is safe!!1!1" while holding stocks in the top ten international biotech conglomerates that nifty little piece of information belongs in the article so I can put the reported issue into perspective. Also I expect any quoted numbers to be checked for correctness and so on. If *AA claims x fantastillion in damages from evil pirates I expect a proper journalist to check that number and break it down.
5. Updates! If an article was incorrect, I want to know. If a new development has come up I want to know. But transparently! Revision control is the keyword.
6. Ease of use. Customisable "home page" and RSS feeds are the bare minimum, along with a sensible feedback mechanism.
7. Searchable archive of all past issues. Any content older than, say, one week should be open to everyone for free. It is not news then anymore, is it?
8. Reasonable pricing, ideally based on how much content I order. Like $1 per topic per month for the basic overview, $3 for in-depth information.

Niche markets

[Comboman]

There must be a couple of more exceptions

Consumer Reports is another periodical website that uses the subscription model (though in that case it is because they don't accept advertising so their reviews can be truly independent). What they have in common with WSJ, Economist and various scientific/medical journals is that they offer highly specialized data to a niche market that is willing to pay a premium for it. General interest newspapers and magazines do not fall into that category which is why the advertising-based model works much better for them.

I'm perfectly willing to pay ...

[gurps_npc]

If they treat me like the purchaser as opposed to their seed grain.

That means:

1. NO ADVERTISING. If you advertise, particularly the annoying, video and sound (with those extra annoying pop-up - or worse pop-out crap), your customers are the advertisers and my attention is what you are selling. Why should I have to pay you so that you can IRRITATE and ANNOY me by selling MY attention? NO. Adverising is a great, perfectly fine way to pay for FREE content. It is NOT an acceptable way to make some extra money on top of what you charge me.

2. NO TRACKING ME. Again, if I am paying you for a service, that means I don't want you to invade myprivacy. You don't track what I read or when. No record keeping of anything I do. You are allowed to count how many people click on a story, but not whether the same person clicks on story X as also clicks on story Y.

3. Video and sound should all be accompanied by printed summaries. Deaf people (and blind people using text-to speech converter programs) are important customers too and some of us don't like the video - it takes too much time, is lazy, and if I wanted that I would turn on the TV.

4. Better, in depth writing that does not accept stupid statements. Don't just accept statements, VERIFY them. (i.e. treat each of the people you quote the way Politifact.org does and when they give numbers make sure they are telling the truth.) When someone says something really stupid like "this snow storm in the heart of winter disproves global warming", call them on it YOURSELF, don't simply get an opposing point of view.

The Internet did not kill newspaper, a combination of poor writing and advertisers did (the advertisers would rather spend 5 cents to talk sell diapers to pregnant women than 10 cents to sell diapers to everyone). Those same forces rule the internet news market - as long as you let them. If you want to recreate the pay-news market, you need to avoid the problems that killed the newspaper.

The issue is this:

[Elfich47]

Because there are less people reading the Times, fewer publicists are directing people to be interviewed at the Times. If you know people are reading the Guardian and not the Times and you want to get your message out, you go to the Guardian because more eyes are going to see your message. That is going to set up a feedback loop where people say "hey, the guardian has more content than the Times does, why am I reading the times." Then fewer people produce content for the Times, fewer people read the Times, etc etc etc.

It is hard to develop a user base when you seem to be actively driving away readers and by extension the people who develop your content.